Saturday, March 2nd, 2019 (
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The Center For Democracy and Technology recently said in their newsletter:
The "lame duck" 109th Congress will return to Washington November 13 to take care of unfinished business before it finally ends. Among the bills President Bush has said he'd like to see passed is the NSA
Domestic Spying bill. In addition, there is an effort afoot to slip into some other bill (probably a spending bill) a provision that would give the telecom companies immunity from liability for any unlawful assistance they have given to the government since 9/11.
What they're talking about is the bill that was introduced to congress backed by Bush that would not only NOT challenge the spying, but would in some forms legalize and expand the power to spy on Americans without a warrant. Fortunately, many major news outlets think that's not likely including the Baltimore Sun:
Republicans for months have known that no bill accomplishing Bush's goal could get filibuster-proof support from 60 senators. Sealing off any hope was what Democratic leader Harry Reid put on his lame-duck
to-do list. The warrantless domestic surveillance bill was conspicuous in its absence.
Tags:
Congress,
George Bush,
Spying
Saturday, March 2nd, 2019 (
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Our most fundamental right as American citizens is being denied in Maryland. I went to the polls to vote today and explained that I wanted to vote, but would only use a paper ballot. While the check-in people suggested a "provisional ballot", the supervisor nixed that and showed me this nice large sign.
Why did I insist on a paper ballot? Perhaps it's because of the Princeton University Study proving the lousy security of this system (with instructional video).
For example, an attacker who gets physical access to a machine or its removable memory card for as little as one minute could install malicious code; malicious code on a machine could steal votes undetectably, modifying all records, logs, and counters to be consistent with the fraudulent vote count it creates. An attacker could also create malicious code that spreads automatically and silently from machine to machine during normal election activities — a voting-machine virus. We have constructed working demonstrations of these attacks in our lab.
Or it could be because of this study done by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
All of the most commonly purchased electronic voting systems have significant security and reliability vulnerabilities. All three systems are equally vulnerable to an attack involving the insertion of corrupt software or other software attack programs designed to take over a voting machine.
If you protest the e-voting, be prepared to give up your right to vote.
But that aside, forget studies and look at our own state's history:
As reported by the Baltimore Sun many poll workers did not show up for work this morning and when they did they many had no idea how to operate new voting technology called "e-poll books" which are a necessary part of the voting process in Maryland and many other Diebold states. The workers were not trained to use that technology because Diebold did not provide the technology to the state until it was too late to properly train the pollworkers.
It's clear that the e-voting system is unstable and NOT READY. The accounting and security, both hardware and software is heavily suspect and it's much safer to rely on the traditional method of voting rather than on the video-poker-like machines they forced on us. But if you try, you may be barred from voting as I was.
Tags:
Diebold,
Elections,
Evoting,
Maryland
